One Million EVs Is Difficult, Doable and Necessary

[fordfocuselectric]

The Obama administration has a dream - to see 1 million electric vehicles on the road. There are currently 251 million vehicles on the road in the United States, so 1 million doesn't sound like many at all. (I wonder how many of those 251 million are actually driving, and how many are parked out in a farmers field rotting into the ground?)

Apparently Americans bought 12 million vehicles last year. For electric vehicles to take a bite out of that market, the manufacturers will really have to step up to the plate - they're even slower than they should be with getting the EVs to customers that have already ordered and paid for them in the case of Nissan and Chevy. Their were 326 Chevy Volts delivered last month, along with 87 Nissan Leafs.

To help spur things along, the President is basically calling the country to out-build, out-compete, and out-innovate the rest of the world.

An auto industry report says that automakers planes are insufficient to meet the goal, and we'll ened to expand charging infrastructure and bring down the cost of battery technology.

What will Ford do to help people buy the Ford Focus Electric?
Will the increase in fuel economy really be enough to motivate the mainstream people to buy EVs?

Full Story here: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/02/one-million-evs-is-difficult-doable-and-necessary/

 

[FocusE]

The Center for Automotive research did a study and has released a forecast of EV sales. This newest study focuses on the expected deployment of vehicles by the state they are deployed in. By using hybrid vehicle history, they estimated in what order, and how many of the Ford Focus Electric car and other EVs will be released in which states.

The study finds that only 496,000 plug-in vehicles (full EV or PHEV as well) will be on the road by 2015. That's the same year the Obama administration is hoping to have a million EVs on the road by.

Even being not quite half of the hopeful number, that still means plug-in vehicle sales would be growing rapidly, from 77 thousand units in 2012 to 140 thousand units a year by 2015!

The study also shines light at the manufacturers, stating that it isn't just a lack of buyers, but it might be a lack of vehicles to purchase. If the Ford Focus Electric follows the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt rollouts then there will be more people waiting for an EV than people that are receiving them!

This may sound grim, but since the government has put political capital at stake with it's lofty electric vehicle goal, if the manufacturers are falling behind it will probably just mean more goverment subsidies...

Here's a PDF of the report for your reading pleasure:
http://images.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/02/deployment.pdf